Beginnings
by Usagi Selene
Summary: The adventures of Rick D-515 as he struggles to raise a 5 year old Summer
1. Chapter 1

When the shitty mobile phone he keept tucked in his back pocket starts ringing mere seconds after he crashed his current spaceship into a tree that had acid for sap on Placitide XIV, Rick knew in his gut that he wasn't going to like whatever was on the other end of the line. Burping loudly, he fished the vibrating phone from his pocket and picked up the call.

"Yeah?" He answered warily, wondering what nonsense his young daughter's idiot husband needed bailing out of this time. He'd given her the number to this phone the last time he saw her (about five years ago, when she'd given birth to the chubby little gurgler, Summer) for emergencies or for when she finally got tired of her loser husband and needed help getting rid of the body. He perked up. Maybe the time had finally come?

"Mr. Sanchez? This is Detective Knight from the Muskegon Police Department…" the voice, a tiny bit reedy from the lightyears' worth of distance between them, paused expectantly. The niggling nugget of foreboding sitting heavy in his stomach began to blossom into actual concern. Beth should have been the only person with this number, so why was a cop calling him?

"WhaaAAat is it? Where -eugh- where's my daughter?" He demanded, heedless of how tightly he was gripping the phone. The detective sighed, and the sympathy and compassion he heard in that drawn out breath made his throat constrict. _Beth.._

"Your daughter and son-in-law were in a car wreck early this morning. I'm very sorry, but neither of them made it."

For a moment, for the briefest second in time, the detective's words didn't register in his mind. In that infinitesimally small moment in time, he was able to continue living in a dimension where his daughter, his baby, his bright eyed girl, was still alive. He'd only just seen her; five years wasn't so long. She'd just been here, tired and beaming at him as she carefully handed over her wrinkly infant who looked up at him with his own eyes. Sure he knew of other Ricks, older Ricks, who didn't have their Beths, but they weren't him, they -

"Mr. Sanchez?" The voice, female he absently identified, interrupted his thoughts.

"A-A-A-Are you sure? Are you sure it's my - my daughter?" He couldn't stop himself from asking. The detective hummed sadly, and he wanted to reach through the phone and snatch her eyes out.

"I'm sorry, sir, but her i.d. was found in the car. We will need you to positively identify her, but that can wait until after you've gotten settled for the night with your granddaughter."

Fuck, he'd forgotten all about Summer. What the fuck, what the fuck was he supposed to do with a child, Beth's child?

"I-I'll be there soon." He disconnected the call and dropped his head on the steering wheel. He stated blankly out the view-ports, only absently aware of the tree acid beginning to eat through the reinforced plexiglass and metal body of the ship. He couldn't care; he didn't care. His daughter was dead, his baby, the only worthwhile thing he ever made. She was gone, and his eyes were burning.

Later, he wouldn't be able to recall how or when he got to the hospital the detective's call had originated from. He was operating on a detached autopilot as he identified his daughter and her shit husband's bodies, swiftly blanking out the sight of her mangled face from his conscious and not daring to reach out and touch her by now ice cold flesh lest his numbness shatter like the thin wall of ice it was and he descend into the spiral of endless, shrieking grief that threatened him with every breath, as he filled out a mountain of paperwork and arranged things for their bodies. He was still sitting in front of that stack of paperwork, staring at the pen in his hand as if he couldn't believe it was real, when the social worker walked in, a sleeping child slung on her hip.

"Mr. Sanchez?" He looked up sluggishly, and the woman gently set the child in his lap. The little girl pouted in her sleep, the sour expression so similar to her mother at that age that it took everything he had not to portal out of there and never look back. He brushed a lock of red hair from her forehead with slightly shaking fingers instead.

"This is Summer. You're all she has now." The woman left, and he sighed, slumping.

Fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

He…wasn't sure what to do with the five year old playing with the guts of a neutrino bomb on his bed.

They were currently in his apartment in the Citadel of Ricks. It was shitty, like all spaces for Mortyless Ricks were, and his was even shittier because he was a "young" Rick and wasn't expected to stay in the space for much longer than it took to sleep off a bender or get healed from a nasty wound. So it wasn't much more than a small kitchen, a living room/bedroom, an even tinier bathroom, and, of course, a lab that was as big as all the other rooms combined.

It wasn't like it bothered him; he used the space for exactly those reasons up until a week ago, and it wasn't like anyone but him or AA-018 or AJ-064, that medic pussy, ever came around anyway. No one was looking for him or wanted anything particular to him; he was a free man. Except now, Beth was…Beth was…she was dea -

Well, he has Summer to look after now.

The day after he got Summer, he portaled the two of them to the Citadel with the intention of dropping her off with Storage Rick and maybe dropping back in in a few years when she was older and easier to handle. It made sense to him: the guy was pretty good with the Mortys after all, and the few older Summers he'd occasionally seen in the Daycare always looked relatively content. What was a smaller Summer when it came down to it, really?

Except the asshole had taken one look at the kid dangling off his hip (as if he hadn't gotten enough dumbfounded stares and hysterical laughs on his way over) and stopped him in his tracks with a resounding, "Fuck no, pal. I-I've got enough shit to deal with without - without a literal child hanging around. Raise her yourself, d-bag." The surrounding Ricks started laughing obnoxiously and pointing crudely at him, nudging each other in the ribs, burping and gasping for breath as they laughed at his misfortune, the old fucks.

He'd scowled, flipped Storage Rick off, and slunk back to his apartment, tattered pride and granddaughter in tow.

So now he sat, anxiously rolling the blunt he normally kept tucked behind his ear between his fingers, itching to light it up but held back by the niggling thought that he probably shouldn't smoke weed in the same room as a five year old. Knowing his luck, she'd get some kinda disease because of it, and wouldn't that just be a kick in his already sore balls?

"Papa?" Summer's tiny, sweet voice reached him and he grimaced. He wasn't even forty for chrissakes! He wasn't old enough to be somebody's grandpa.

"Yes, sweetie?" He answered, forcefully pushing any irritation from his voice as he spoke to the child. She fixed him with a serious stare.

"I'm hungry."

"So go - go find some food, kiddo."

He was vaguely amazed at how fearsome a glare the kid was able to work up. He groaned and got up, walking into the kitchen to see what he had.

"Y-Y-You really fucked me over, Beth. Really inconsiderate of you to leave like this," he muttered as he rifled through his fridge, his scowl growing fiercer and fiercer as he realized everything in it was moldy or expired.

Fuck.

He was going to have to get a job.


	3. Chapter 3

AJ-064, colloquially known as "Cat Ears" Rick because of the annoyingly adorable cat ears and tail he and everyone else in his dimension had, unlocked the door to his apartment and stumbled in. It had been a bitch of a long day at the Med Center. Mortys of all dimensions had been dragged into the triage center, their wounds ranging from mild cuts and bruises to their guts dangling behind them as they were dragged in by their Ricks, blood and viscera staining the floors even as their high pitched screams filled the air.

He hated working triage, hating hearing the pathetic whimpering, moaning, and screaming of the Mortys as their lives were saved or ended, whichever was more merciful or easier for the attending Rick. AJ-064 was not given to being cruel; his work always had at its heart the desire to alleviate suffering, and so he found it to be the height of insanity to expend his energy in a place he knew would never feel the same way he did. The other medically inclined Ricks (nearly all from the AJ subset of realities) already gave him enough grief for being a so called "young" Rick. His Beth wasn't even old enough to to have a Summer yet; he was practically a baby! What did he know, they would jeer, most of them drunk or high off their asses, inebriation lending their haggard faces an air of the grotesque that he was really not looking forward to developing, about what Mortys needed? He'd only recently abandoned his family for good, always coming in to work with poorly hidden sorrow in his eyes because Beth had caught him leaving and begged and begged him to stay. He was only human, dammit, even if he did have cat ears. How was he supposed to deny his own child, and what happened to all these other Ricks that they could do it so easily and gleefully?

At least, that's what he'd wondered until his little incident with his assigned Morty.

He groaned loudly, pushing that thought away and collapsed on his bed. Unlike all those grandpas, he preferred a twin bed to a shitty old cot, and he wiggled with undisguised pleasure as his thin body sank into the mattress, ears twitching with relief at the thought of the solid twelve hours of sleep that lay ahead of him. He closed his eyes, sighing. Sweet, sweet silence. Then:

"Grandpa Riiiiiiiiiiicccccckkkkk! I wanna play dolls!"

The fuck?

AJ-064's uni-brow furrowed in absolute incomprehension. He could have sworn he just heard a fucking child's voice shrieking from the wall he shared with D-515, but he had to be mistaken. That guy was barely older than him; there was no way his Beth was that young (he'd seen pictures of her from at least as old as fifteen in D-515's apartment), and his Summer couldn't have been seventeen yet. Maybe it was time to cut down on his pill intake...? He settled back down to sleep.

"Grandpa RiiiiIIIck! I wanna plAY DOLLS!" Okay so he wasn't imagining things. There was definitely a loud ass kid on the other side of the wall, and she really wanted to play fucking dolls. His ears were plastered to the base of his skull from her screaming.

"Sweetie, it's the mi-middle of the fucking night. Can't you-can't you juUUUst wait till later?" He heard D-515 reply, exasperatedly. AJ-064 agreed with him wholeheartedly. Little girls needed to shut the fuck up and sleep. The little sweetie apparently disagreed because he heard the sound of something being thrown or banged against.

"I want dolls! I want DOLLS! I WANT DOLLS, GRANDPA RICK! I WANT THE DOLLS MY MOMMIE GAVE ME! I WANT -" The child's, who he now assumed was Summer but the youngest Summer he'd ever heard, yelling was abruptly cut off, and AJ-064 couldn't help the little kernel of concern he felt for the child's safety. D-515 came from a weird dimension, and as a result he was a tad bit crueler than most Ricks his age. But surely...surely he wouldn't hurt his young granddaughter?

AJ-064 was up and out his apartment before he could even think about it, his fist impacting solidly and a little frantically against the metal of Rick D-515's apartment door. Unbidden, images of another young grandchild, eyes wide and somehow still full of love and trust even as the life faded from them, came to mind, constricting his throat, drilling his heart, and freezing his mind until his only thought was _not again, not again, not another one, oh please, not -_

"A-And just whAAat the fuck is yo-your problem, Cat Dick?" D-515's voice, scratchy, tired, and very irate, broke through the haze of panic that had overwhelmed him. Thankful though he was, D-515's aggressive tone instantly put him on the defensive, and ever Rick knew the best defense was a killer offense.

"What, y-y-you think I want to bangin' on your d-door in the middle of the night, Fives?" He snapped, gesturing at D-515, or rather Fives as other Ricks generally called him, and the red headed child cradled protectively in his arms. Her face, red and wet with still trying years, was pressed into the crook of Fives's neck, and some of her silky red hair was already beginning to tangle up in the many piercings adorning her grandfather's ear. Fives rolled his eyes and stepped back into his apartment, either not minding or too tired to care that AJ-064 followed him in and closed the door.

Fives gently laid the girl down on his cot, detangling her hair from his piercings with a patience and gentleness that 064 hadn't known he was capable of. Fives looked up at him and smirked, the bangs that fell to cover his eyes doing nothing to hide the slight malice glinting within the dark depths.

"W-What? You-you didn't think you medic pieces of shit were the only Ricks capable of tenderness di-did you, _Killer B?"_ AJ-064, the very recently dubbed Killer B Rick, stiffened, his ears flat against his head and long blue tail swaying behind him, the fur puffy and betraying his ire.

"Sh-Shut the fuck up," he growled before turning his attention back to the now sleeping child.

"What're you doing with a Summer that young?" The nasty expression dropped from Fives's face, and he rose from his kneeling position to walk to his work bench. Once there, he pulled out a tote full of wire and scrap and dumped it on the previously clean surface. Soldering gun in hand, he began crafting something.

"My Beth, she-she's - I've got the kid now," Fives muttered, running a hand through his hair, sweeping the long bangs back before returning to the assemblage of wire and metal on his desk. There were streaks of black grease in his undercut and flecks of copper dotting the stubble on his jaw. Killer B pulled off his blue gloves, stared at the calloused fingers hidden beneath. The lack of blood staining them was always a shock.

"A-Ah..." He said. Fives hummed in agreement, absently lighting the blunt and sticking it between his lips. Killer B dozed against the wall, exhaustion relentlessly pulling him toward oblivion.

Actions 


	4. Chapter 4

Rick wasn't a man given to thanking others, especially not other Ricks lest they think he actually gave a damn about them, but even he couldn't deny what a help AJ-064 and AA-018 had been to him since he and Summer started living at the Citadel full time.

The first job he landed was shit: a Mechanic Rick working on the garbage ships of other, less mechanically inclined Ricks. He hated every second of it, toiling away under the hood, arguing with every Zeep, Zap, and Zip (their names always seemed to start with a Z he'd noticed) in their microverse batteries when they "evolved," and god he hated when they did that. And the attitude! His first week, he got into a fist fight at least once every day, and he literally dropkicked a Morty out of his shop for hovering over him like some kind of...some kind of...thing that hovered.

He didn't have the time or inclination to adopt one of those whiners when he already had his hands full with his Summer.

The second job he landed was thanks to J-412. It was as a part-time Guard Rick. Three arbitrary days of the arbitrary week during "off hours," he suited up and did his best to stave off boredom for twelves hours while he and J-412 patrolled the Citadel and monitored the main portal. After his Guard shift was over, it was straight to work as a Mechanic and his increasing dedication to never ever have a Morty.

And that's where his begrudging gratefulness to AJ-064 and AA-018 came in. For whatever reason, the two of them had taken pity on him. AA-018, nicknamed Mellow Rick because of her relatively calm nature and who's only vice seemed to be her acute desire to fling herself face first into the void, took Summer during the day, taking the young girl to planets and dimensions uninhabited by sentient life, always returning with arms full of heavily perfumed flowers and spending the long afternoons letting the young girl weave flowers into her blue and black braids and color in the many tattoos decorating her dark brown skin with finger-paint. Summer had taken to calling her Grandma Rick and was always sad when Mellow's work studying dimensional rifts kept her away.

AJ-064, Killer B (he'd shorted it even further to just Bee because he couldn't be bothered to say that shit every time), watched her on the nights he had his Guard shifts. He'd been a little wary at first, he'd heard about what Bee did to his assigned Morty and how ruthless he was in the triage unit, but the two seemed to get along well, Summer having immediately taken a liking to the other Rick's cat ears and tail, stubbornly calling him Kitty Grandpa no matter how many times he corrected her. Mellow and him whiled away many a late night sharing a blunt and laughing about Summer's fascination with Bee's tail and ears and the beleaguered man's acceptance of it.

He really needed a bigger place, but...it was nice like this. Mellow and Bee had converted a small section of his lab space into a dining room, unearthing or stealing a kitchen table from god only knew where, and he was starting to get used to the familiarity of walking into the apartment to be greeted by the smell of diner cooking, of seeing Mellow brushing Summer's hair after a bath in the tiny bathroom while Bee stood swearing by the stove top, usually furiously stirring or hitting something in the pot, his medical uniform stained by food splatter and his normally sleek fur mussed from Summer's grimy hands. They'd all sit down to eat, taking turns dragging Bee through the mud for whatever he'd made that night and shoving as much as they could in their mouths when he threatened to portal it away. Afterwards, they'd crowd around the TV, sometimes all four of them, sometimes just him and Summer, but always his little granddaughter would be pressed against his side or curled in his lap, her tiny hands remarkably strong as they gripped the front of his shirt even after she finally drifted to sleep.

Looking at her sleeping form (she'd basically commandeered his bed, and though she took up hardly any space, the army of robotic stuffed animals and dolls he'd made her filled the rest of the space, but he didn't mind sleeping on the floor or at his bench anyway, and he'd kill anyone who said he was getting soft, dammit), the yawning void where Beth used to be didn't seem like such a large and imposing obstacle to face.

Maybe...maybe he could do this...maybe he wouldn't run away this time.


	5. Chapter 5

"I-I-I don't want to be that Rick, but don't you think Summer should be in school?" The Ricks being spoken to, D-515 and AA-018, paused in their game of cards to look up, with identical expressions of disbelief on their faces, at AJ-064. AJ was just walking in from his shift at the Healing Center. It had run late today because C-137 and his Morty had gotten into shenanigans that wound up imploding an entire dimension, and of course Ricks and Mortys of all dimensions had been caught in the fallout. He was fairly certain he'd seen every organ in the human body at least once today, and he was dead tired. Which meant that his normal filter wasn't working normally and dumb shit kept coming out of his mouth, but he was Rick, goddammit, and Ricks didn't admit when they were wrong.

The medical Rick felt heat flood his cheeks at their critical stares but refused to be intimidated, returning their incredulous looks with a disdainful one of his own. D-515 tossed his hand of cards onto the table with a theatrical sigh, kicking the empty seat away from the table so that AJ could sit in it. He did, but he also refused to be grateful about it. D-515 rolled his eyes and reached a hand up to play with one of his numerous piercings.

"Look, Rick, I think we all know what a monumental waste of time the American school system is. All it's going to do is fill her head with a lot of ignorant nonsense," he said, and AA-018 raised her beer in agreement.

"And what do you want her to go to school for anyway? You...you getting tired of washing boogers outta your fur already?" AA-018 asked, a smirk flitting across her full lips. AJ flipped her off and slouched in the chair. Fuck, his feet were aching. He slowly tugged his medical gloves off, letting the bloodstained material fall to the floor, and flexed his bare hands.

"Fuck me, you know I don't give a shit about that when I get worse in my tail at work," he said. AA passed him a beer from the cooler under the table. He grimaced but took it. What he really wanted was the pills he had stashed in his apartment, but ever since D-515 took up permanent residence, he found himself spending more and more time at the other Rick's place cooking food and letting the tiny Summer abuse him. He was thinking of getting himself checked out to make sure he hadn't contracted some kind of illness Summer might have brought over from her home dimension. He was sure the warm feeling that bloomed in his chest when he was around these Ricks and this Summer wasn't normal.

"Then what's your-your...why are you asking questions like that?" D-515 asked, irritation plain in his raspy voice. AJ turned to look at the young girl curled sleeping on the bed. She was surrounded by a mountain of blankets and an army of robots and cybernetic dolls her Rick kept making for her. Beside the bed, the husk of a neutrino bomb was filled to the brim with the toys that didn't fit on the twin bed. A hanging plant that gave off a soothing scent and a pleasant song (brought by AA-018 the second day she and Summer were acquainted. "It-It's-It's just to help the kid sleep faster so I don't have to listen to that screaming all hours of the night," she explained hastily when D-515 accepted the plant with a raised eyebrow) twisted lazily on its hook, pushed gently by the breeze coming in from the open balcony door. Summer was smiling sweetly even in her sleep, her face half hidden in the fabric of a doll she'd made with some of her grandpa's shirts.

"I just...I don't want her to end up like the Mortys do," he said softly. D-515 stiffened and tore his eyes away from his granddaughter.

"They don't all-"

"Yes they do," AA-018 interrupted, her dark eyes coming to rest on the alternate version of her future grandchild. A breeze swept over them, bringing with it the smell of alcohol, junk food, and just a hint of the hopelessness that was the cornerstone of every Rick.

"I-I've studied the timelines of more Ricks than I can remember...eventually, it happens to all of them...one way or another," she said, and the finality of her tone was absolute, brooked no argument. D-515 twisted hard on the stud atop his right ear, a hard frown dragging his mouth down. His eyes swam with a desperation that the other two knew all too well.

"What...where could I take her?"

"Why not back to your own dimension? I-I-I anticipated this very thing, and I've laid the groundwork already," AA-018 said, getting startled looks from the other Ricks.

"Groundwork? You've been fucking around in my dimension?" D-515 asked, indignant. AA scoffed.

"Really, Rick? _Really?_ That's...that's what we're doing right now? Really?" She asked dryly, shaking her head at his audacity. Honestly these male Ricks were too much sometimes. He flushed at her tone, his brown skin reddening slightly around the cheeks, and he opened his mouth, an equally sarcastic retort burning his lips, when suddenly the sound of someone pounding on the door broke through the air. The three Ricks snapped their heads towards the door, identical expressions of anger on their faces as the incessant pounding woke up Summer. D-515 strode to his granddaughter's side, scooping the cranky child up in his arms, his movements jerky with irritation.

"Can one of you glip glops get the f-fucking door?" He snarled even as AJ-064 was yanking open said door, a fierce scowl on his face and murder in his eyes.

His fury was brought up short by the pair standing just outside the door. It was a Morty and a Summer. By their ages, he could tell they belonged to an older Rick, and by the state of their clothes, he could tell they'd just come through one hell of an adventure. Behind them was a Guard Rick and a Council Rick, both their expressions grim.

"This is the home of Rick Sanchez, earth dimension D-515, is it not," the Council Rick asked, his eyes sweeping over the interior of the apartment with a judgmental air, putting the assembled Ricks on the defensive.

"It is. What do you want?" Fives asked as he stepped forward, his Summer slung across his hip defiantly. The Morty and the older Summer could both be heard sucking in surprised breaths, but none of the Ricks spared them a glance, too busy glaring at each other. The Guard Rick nudged the two teenagers forward with the tip of his gun, and they stumbled in the apartment.

"These are C-137's. He's going to be staying in the Med Center for a while, and these two need looking after. Since you're already so good with Summers," the Council Rick spared the young girl a glance, smirking at D-515's scowl, "it's been decided you can take care of them until he's better. You'll be doing this in lieu of your other two jobs, so don't worry about getting paid: you can go back to your life of drudgery once they're gone." The older Ricks laughed nastily and walked away, D-515's infuriated snarl only fueling their laughter.

The two teens shifted uncomfortably under the stare he leveled at them, and he sighed, rolling his eyes, before stepping back to let them enter.

"Just what I fucking need," he muttered, slamming the door behind him.


	6. Chapter 6

Rick D-515, known as Fives Rick to those who knew him best, ushered C-137 Rick's current Morty and Summer into his small apartment as gracefully as he could. Which is to say, very very grumpily.

"Alright, y-y-you little motherfuckers, I guess you'll be staying with me for a while. Try not to be a pain in my ass," he said, directing the last part to the Morty with a pointed look and had to physically stop himself from rolling his eyes when the kid flinched a little. The Summer (and it was weird seeing what his baby Summer was going to look like in twelve years. Would his Summer look like _that_? With that...desperate look hiding in her eyes, miserable and hungry for acknowledgement, for love? Jesus) swept her eyes over the contents of the room quickly, catching and holding on the younger version of herself half hidden by AA-018 and AJ-064, surprise and some darker, quickly hidden emotion flickering in her eyes before crossing her arms defensively and leaning her hip on the edge of his work bench.

"A-Are you guys really all Ricks?" The question was from the Morty, all shaky yet full of forced bravado, as though the kid thought he'd be less inclined to bash his head in or toss him through a portal if he thought he might put up a fight. If he had met the kid even a few months earlier, he would even now be dialing in the coordinates to the nastiest dimension he could think of and laugh as the kid fell screaming into it, but now, well...who had the energy for that kind of thing anyway?

"Yeah, kid, we're all Ricks that's kind of why we live at the _Citadel of Ricks_. W-What'd you-you think all us Ricks had to have dicks or look old and gross? Try expanding your mind every once in a while," Bee said, ears turned back and tail swaying lazily behind him as he walked to the small kitchen and started pulling things out to make dinner. The Morty's face flushed with embarrassment, and Fives snorted, scooping his Summer up and cuddling his her close for the briefest moment before laying her back down on the bed and telling her to go to sleep. He could feel the other Summer's gaze boring into the side of his face, and he rolled his eyes in exasperation, cutting a quick look toward Mellow, who flipped the end of her ponytail off her shoulder before clearing the rickety table of the playing cards, drawing the teenage girl's attention to her and off of Fives.

"Well, Morty, you just gonna, ugh, stand there or are you gonna help clean up? We're not your dick bag Rick, so don't think you can get away with standing around and doing nothing, you little shit," Mellow said offhandedly, startling the boy into trotting over and helping while his sister smothered a laugh in the back of her hand. AA smirked at the girl over her brother's head and nodded towards Bee grumbling in the kitchen.

"Hey, Cat Grandpa, need a hand?" The Summer asked Bee, unable to resist lightly flicking the tip of his tail. The scowl he leveled at her was fierce but the effect was somewhat nullified when he pushed a cutting board full of onion slices her way and gruffly ordered her to dice them. Morty, meanwhile, had finished helping Mellow straighten up and had settled hesitantly into the chair next to her, looking for all the world like a frightened, though increasingly curious, chick that had somehow fallen from its nest. Mellow shuffled the cards in her hands and asked the kid if he knew how to play Galorpian Hustle, and when he said no, she sighed with mock irritation and began slowly explaining the rules of the game. Fives could almost feel the smug sense of accomplishment radiating from her when the Morty finally relaxed.

For a while, the only sounds in the apartment were those of Bee and the Summer quietly bickering in the kitchen as they concocted some kind of casserole from Bee's home dimension, the groans of Morty as he lost yet another hand of cards, the tinkling of the zippers on Mellow's jacket being jostled as her shoulders shook with laughter at the distraught Morty, and the soft lullaby floating down from the gently swinging plant.

Fives breathed deep, smoothing back the wisps of red hair that stuck to his Summer's face in the afternoon heat. Some mischievous dick of a Rick had programmed the climate in the young Rick sector of the Citadel to be as hot and as humid as New Orleans in the height of summer and then locked the controls so only a Council level Rick could reprogram it. As none of those old fucks lived in the sector, they gave absolutely zero shits about it. Not that it would be all that difficult to bypass whatever had been done, but it wasn't like any of them actually cared enough to go through that kind of effort.

Still, his Summer and he were from a colder dimension than this, it couldn't be good for her (or him, and that's why he really cared, he hastily assured himself) to swelter like this all the time. Maybe it would be better to just go home. Mellow had already done a lot of the legwork, so...

"So, like, how old are you guys?" Summer, the older one with the jaded eyes, suddenly asked. She'd left the kitchen once the casserole was safely in the oven and dropped into the closest open seat, watching Mellow thrash her brother for a few rounds before finally speaking up.

"Y-Yeah," Morty said, laying down his hand of cards and twisting in his seat to look at all three Ricks, "you guys don't seem old enough to, uh, have me or S-S-Summer," he said, doing an absolutely terrible job of not looking at Fives crouched next to the sleeping child.

AA-018 leaned her chair back and regarded the two teens with half-lidded eyes, a mysterious smirk playing across her lips. AJ-064 tugged on the earring piercing his ear, his one and only nervous tick, before abandoning the dirty dishes in the sink and dropping into the remaining empty chair, pulling a small plastic bag full of brightly colored pills out of his lab coat and downing a few as he did so.

"I'm twenty-seven," Mellow finally said, smirk widening into a grin at the kids' shocked faces.

"Thirty-six," Bee slurred before slumping forward and passing out as the pills he'd taken took effect and laid him out.

"Ugh, I hope heEEE set the timer on the oven thi-this time," Fives muttered. He was not in the mood for more burned food.

"So you two are C-137's kids, eh?" Fives said in a much louder voice as he walked past them and into the kitchen to pour himself a drink, noting with a touch of thankfulness that Bee had indeed set the timer for once.

"Uh, yeah, Grandpa Rick." The Summer said. He grimaced.

"Yeahhhh, let's not call me that, okay? I already feel old enough as is. Call me Rick or Fives," he said, surprising the two when he tossed them bottles of water. Summer caught hers deftly, and of course Morty's hit him in the face. Mellow snorted and shook her head.

"You're a clumsy little fucker, aren't you?" She asked, not unkindly. The Morty blushed and gulped down some water. Fives eyed the Summer again. For all that he occasionally saw them around, this was his first time seeing one up close. She was a cute kid, no doubt about it. His genes had definitely won the battle against that idiot Jerry's, which could only work in her favor as she grew older. If he didn't know better, he would have said she didn't have a care in the world, but those eyes...those eyes gave her away.

She was broken, as broken as he was.

He stood abruptly and walked to the balcony, blunt already in hand and being rolled between two fingers as his mind raced over what he was thinking of doing. A curious tension coiled in his gut, an excitement that he had thought himself incapable of feeling beginning to race through his blood, and he only distantly heard the oven timer go off and Mellow tell the teens to eat then get to sleep. The tone of her voice let him know she had noticed his mood and likely knew his train of thought, and when she came to stand next to him after everyone else was asleep, expertly snagging the blunt from his mouth and taking a long drag before favoring him with an utterly familiar grin, he knew she was on the same page.

Tomorrow would be a very busy day, for sure.


End file.
